Beaverdale Rioja Not Great

Advertise with us
shop deals on amazon
Shop deals on ebay
The Homebrew Forum

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
M

mar

New Member
Joined
May 26, 2015
Messages
6
Reaction score
0
Location
NULL
Hi,

First post, hope it's in the right place.

Took up home brewing 6 months or so ago and have had very good results with my ales, and the lagers I have done for visiting friends.

My passion is drinking wine so I was itching to get going with a red wine kit.

My first was a Beaverdale Rioja, followed instructions to the letter and it's been in the bottle for a month. I tried a drop at bottling and tried another glass a few days ago. Now I know it's early days but it's not great. The taste is still quite fruity and perhaps weak. Am I being too impatient, I know it improves month over month but should it taste kind of OK by now…say a cheap bottle of supermarket wine kind of taste? A month ago I started a Beaverdale Merlot, it’s just about at bottling time, I’m losing a bit of faith in it now given what I have had so far with the Rioja. It’s quite disappointing but I haven’t given up hope yet.

Any comments? Thank you.
 
Making red wine from concentrate and sugar can't match the genuine article. However, I recently made a chianti classico taste pretty good by adding oak chips, dried elderberries, tinned and frozen black cherries, frozen strawberries and raspberries to the concentrate. I matured it in an oak barrel for 20 days. It could do with a month in bottle. All the extras add significantly to the cost, but required if you want good body, colour, flavour and aroma.
 
I make pinot grigio and barollo, always brew short
At 20 litres and leave it 9 months at least, normally
A year before drinking. I alwars pour into a decanter
An hour or two before drinking.
 
tonyhibbett said:
Making red wine from concentrate and sugar can't match the genuine article.
Click to expand...

My brother is married to a French woman and I remember in about 1976 mentioning to her father in jest that like him I made wine, but unlike him, I didn't have a small vineyard (he had about three acres of vines). He was pretty derisory about my use of concentrate and sugar - especially the adding of sugar to the must and called it 'vin sucre' - sugar wine. I don't know anything about modern wine kits, but if folk are adding a kilo of sugar to a tin of concentrate, the wine will be thin and rather tasteless, I would think, kind of like when people add a kilo of table sugar to a tin of hopped malt and then get thin, tasteless beer.

It might be a lot different if the wine was made of two kit cans and no sugar.
 
i have just bagged (in a box) several 6 bottle beaverdale kits as a trial, Shiraz, Merlot, Cab Sav, Barrola and Sauvignon Blanc. Mostly to see if they are better than the cellar 7 level kits which are about 25% cheaper. When comparing the one thing you must do is give them the same time to mature. To me that means a minimum of 6 months and ideally a year in storage. I always make as described by the supplier first and if its ok then all is good, if not then as Pete says brew short, it will help the flavour. I also decant into a jug and leave for several hours before drinking........patience they say is a virtue, and a necessity in making good wine from kits.

Give it more time, while you wait there are juice wines and turbo cider to play with.
 
Thanks for the replies. Patience then, I'll just enjoy the ale in the meantime!

80% of my bottling is in corked bottles, the other 20% I have used once opened screw top bottles...do the cork ones age better or will I not be able to tell the difference?

OK to store in the garage do you think...it's not insulated so temperature is pretty much the same as outside (down to 8 degrees or so overnight and going up to 17 or so during the day at the moment). I'm running out of wine/beer storage in the house, my Mrs is already complaining about finding bottles everytime she opens a cupboard :nono:
 

Similar threads

Keruso
Keg or bottle my 1st Stout
Replies
11
Views
397
The-Engineer-That-Brews
The-Engineer-That-Brews
William Wallace
Is this mold?
Replies
8
Views
640
MashBag
MashBag
Paulus
Some advice on upping Muntons Gold Continental Pilsner yeast
Replies
4
Views
416
dmtaylor
dmtaylor
H
This is not my first rodeo...
Replies
4
Views
212
old dog new tricks
old dog new tricks
Wynott
Sloe wine(s) advice
Replies
0
Views
413
Wynott
Wynott

Latest posts

Back
Top